Thursday, September 3, 2009

Outsourcing company may move call center to downtown

Outsourcing company ServiceSource is close to leasing 50,000 square feet of space in downtown Nashville, a deal that would give a shot in the arm to an office submarket with more than 20 percent of its space vacant.
The San Francisco-based company would move from the roughly 25,000 square feet of space that its call center has occupied in the former CNA building near Nashville International Airport since December 2007.

New York real estate investment firm Sterling American Property Inc. owns that building now called Commerce Center East and the former SunTrust Bank Building, where ServiceSource wants to move, in joint ventures with local investors.

The investors include Rob Lowe, a principal in commercial real estate brokerage firm Colliers Turley Martin Tucker.

The former SunTrust building at 201 Fourth Ave. N. is more than half empty after its former namesake abandoned 120,000 square feet there last year to relocate to Eakin Properties’ new SunTrust Plaza a few blocks away.

Lowe declined to comment on ServiceSource’s negotiations to switch its local addresses when contacted this week. A call to a company spokesman in San Francisco wasn’t returned.

ServiceSource sells service contracts and training to customers of computer and health-care technology equipment makers. The company, which typically hires recent college graduates, said it planned to bring 125 jobs to Nashville in an announcement early last year.
Getahn Ward covers commercial real estate. He can be reached at 615-726-5968 or gward@tennessean.com.




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